52 Days to Go

Band-wagon time! After a couple of weeks having much fun with A-Wings it’s time for something else. Let’s (be like almost everyone else and) fly X-Wings at an X-Wing tournament! I’m pretty excited to try this out. Which Star Wars fan in their right mind isn’t excited by the idea of T-65s taking on the world!

Speaking of being a Star Wars fan CLONE WARS IS COMING BACK! If you haven’t seen the original seasons do yourself a favour and watch it! 2.0 and Clone Wars to look forward to, the Autumn is going to be AMAZING!

Long ago when the Arc-170 first landed I took the predecessor of the list I’m going to use to an 8 man event and won it, the game has changed a lot since then but here is what that list was:

Luke Skywalker	Wes Jansen	Wedge Antillies
Vectored Thrusters	Vectored Thrusters	Vectored Thrusters
R3 Astromech	R3 Astromech	R3 Astromech
Veteran Instincts	Veteran Instincts	Adaptability

It was 100 points of themed list that won more through to good match ups than anything else, but 3 PS10 X-Wings was a lot of fun. Since Wave 14 dropped and more importantly the Renegade Refit arrived all of a sudden X-Wings are somewhat more popular than they have been since wave one and two.

Whether it be five rookies or a couple of aces with another ship we’re seeing them everywhere. And it’s great. The list I am taking to IbuyWargames’s store champs is very much based on the list above. With no table time I’m taking it to a premier event and seeing if it’s any good, cause that’s how I roll.

With no need for Vectored Thrusters thanks to the S-Foils I save 6 points straight away. Then add in the refit and that’s another 6 points saved, not including the discount on the Elite Pilot Talent, (which in this case will save me another 3 points) I’m left with a template for the list with a bunch of points ready play with!

Standard load out on all three ships is obvious: S-Foils and Re-Fit, I’ll look at the other “auto include”: Integrated Astromech when we get on to astros. I’ve put 6 upgrades in the list have spent no points. That means I’m sitting with three X-Wings on a mere 80 points, that’s lots to play with.

Elite Pilot Talents. As tempting as it is to throw in Expertise everywhere, or Outmaneuver I just can’t get away from how important Pilot Skill is at the moment. VI Nym, Quickdraw and RAClo are still a thing. Vermeil, Miranda and Rey are still hugely significant in the game at PS8. I can obviously put Veteran Instincts on all of them all but that feels less exciting that it should, so only Wes is getting Veteran instincts, I need him shooting first to strip tokens off people.

So rather than going all in on pilot skill I’m trying an EPT I’ve never used before. Determination. Given my somewhat well document dislike of RAClo it’s a wonder I haven’t tried it before! The real spark that made me decide to give it a run was seeing how much use Chris Thursten got out of it last weekend on his RAC. With 8 out of 33 cards being pilot crits it seems a good shot at avoiding some damage, it’s only a 24% chance of triggering, but it’s all about playing the odds. Both Wedge and Luke are taking it, you gotta be determined to take down the Deathstar right?

Which takes us to the other upgrade slot of note, the Astromechs. Luke first, he get’s R2-D2, cause that’s what the fluff demands! To make full use of R2’s ability Luke is taking a shield upgrade rather than an integrated astro, I don’t want to jettison R2! We’re already anticipating Luke being a monster in 2.0. This version is clearly not quite that, but at only 34 points he is the most expensive ship in the list, but could be a tanky bargain.

Wedge is getting an Astro I’ve never used, Wedge is getting an R5. Again, the intergrated astromech is being put aside, with his EPT letting him discard pilot crits and his astro letting him flip anyone of the 25 ship crits face down at the during the end phase he should be pretty tanky. Come 2.0 the X-wing will have 4 hull and 2 shields, in preparation I’ve taken a hull upgrade on Wedge as it should give him a bit more protection from the inevitable double damage crit.

Finally we come to Wes. Wes has a default option. R3-A2 is the only choice to take, the ability to shut down expertise or force a ship to deal with the stress is too useful and all the cool kids are running it these days. But I don’t really like stress causing mechanics. I know how good they are but they just annoy me, they’re not particularly fun to play against so I prefer not to use them. In 2.0 stress stacking on your opponents doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore, for which I am truly grateful, so I’m not taking it now.

It’ll probably bite me on the ass but I’m going with another astro I have never used before, R5-D8. So he can trade an action to get have a 5/8 chance of discarding a face down damage card. Wes is the most fragile of my ships so I have given him a hull upgrade too, that should hopefully keep him alive a little longer.

I know Integrated Astromech is a great upgrade but seeing as how all my astro’s help fix my ships (which is kind of what astromechs are designed to do) throwing them away for a point of damage seems a little contradictory, plus I had a few points to spend.

So the list looks like this:

Luke Skywalker	Wes Jansen	Wedge Antillies
Determination	Veteran Instincts	Determination
R2-D2	R5-D8	R5
S-Foils	S-Foils	S-Foils
Shield Upgrade	Hull Upgrade	Hull Upgrade
Renegade Re-Fit	Renegade Re-Fit	Renegade Re-Fit

That’s a lot of stuff for 98 points. They’re all pretty tanky, they’re all pretty shooty and more importantly they’re all characterful X-Wings. I’ve fit in 3 cards that I’ve never used before (a trend in my world of late, we haven’t got long to try stuff out we’ve never tried before) and I’m really excited to give it a go. Aside from the refit and the S-Foils the list is made entirely of cards that pre-date wave 4!

The battle plan is simple, the three ships function as one. Wes shoots first and removes a token, Wedge shoots to push through as much damage as possible, hopefully removing any shields then Luke lets the Force guide him and hopefully rolls four natural crits!

The event has sold out, with 50 pilots here with a waiting list, and there is as ever some real quality on show, to name a few:

• Ben Lee: 2018 European Champion
• Martyn Chivers:  2018 UK System Open Champion
• Tom Forstner: 2018 UK System Open Runner Up
• Sim Pone: 2018 Sheffield Regional Winner
• James “Two Steaks” Finlayson: 2018 Regional Dice Collector Extraordinaire
• Alex Birt: Worlds 2018 Top 16

Not gonna lie, it’s a bit intimidating for me and my three untested X-Wings. It’s why Ian’s events always sell out, people know they’ll get some seriously tough games in. Today there are 6 rounds before the top 8 cut, so it’s going to be a properly long day. One 6-0, five 5-1s and the best two 4-2s. I guess I’m aiming at 5-1 then! Ha. That’ll take some doing….

And it didn’t start well. Pairing into fellow 186th Tom Duncan running two reapers and the inquisitor. It went badly wrong and jam spam meant that any shots I had were naked dice only. Tom smashed me, I damaged his PS 1 Reaper with Palp on it and that was it. It dawned on my that the day could well be long. All the fun of list building and theorising out of the window, regardless of the fix they are still X-Wing on hard mode. But a game one loss isn’t the end of the world.

Game two was against Alex Fletcher of Zombie Squadron running three defenders with a swarm leader Vessery. All the tokens in the world, consistent damage and consistent defence, and the X-Wings couldn’t push through enough damage fast enough. Another 100-0 loss and another lack of finding the X-Wings stimulating to fly. Wes, Wedge and Luke have such seemingly cool abilities, but they hemorrhage damage so quickly.

 Game three against another member of Zombie Squadron. Nick Tregunna running Nym and Rey. I was able to isolate Rey, focus fire on her and then turn on Nym. I got a bit lucky with the red dice when Nym started lobbing bombs about and when Nym finished Wedge off with Wes and Luke still focusing on him it was game over. 100-33 win. A glimmer of hope that I might like the X-Wings after all? No, this game did nothing to give me the feels I had been hoping for when I wrote the list. For some people winning is a great inducer of fun feelings. Of course winning with the X-Wings was better than losing with the X-Wings, but I’d rather lose with the A-Wings than win with the X-Wings.

And to the fourth round, playing Alex Birt running 5 Rookies. This game was nuts the variance swung wildly, but with 4 ships moving first (I managed to kill one very quickly) Alex was able to block me fairly consistently and reduce my already massively limited action economy. I killed one of his Rookies and had two of them on one hull with no astromech left to jettison, but I couldn’t get those all important kills shots.

Had I been able to drop a second ship before losing my first, maybe even with losing a ship, I suspect I could have gone on to win this one, but as it was Alex went on to finish of the aces pretty quickly. 100-20 to him. This was the most enjoyable game on the day, mainly because it couldn’t help but feel balanced as a match up, and Alex is always a great opponent.

Flagging from the heat and the long day it was onto another member of Zombie Squadron, this time Tim Farmer, flying Dash and a stripped down Corran. X-Wings and Heavy Laser Cannons don’t mix. My only shot at winning this one was to kill dash and then try to pin down Corran. What actually happened Dash fired his big gun a lot, and made up for all the bad green dice that Tim had had earlier in the day and X-Wings went pop. 100-31 win for Tim, and down to 1-4 for me.

And onto game 6, glad to be rid of the X-Wings after this game I lined up against Don Shields and his three silencers. No Kylo here and a top PS of 7 meant that the X-Wings should all be able to arc dodge. I actually managed the plan of focussing fire on one ship at a time, and it worked really well. But rather than enjoying flying the ships I found myself relieved to have got through the day! I won this one 100-0 and I still couldn’t find it within myself to love the X-Wing like I really wanted to.

My opponents were all great during the day, I can’t fault them in attitude or anything. Apart from Tom’s double reaper list in game one nothing I played against felt overtly bust (and well done Tom for winning the whole thing!), but I just didn’t click with the ships. I dearly wish I had taken Boba Guri/Boba Fenn/Triple Vipers/Trip A-Wings instead. Sometimes that’s just how it goes. Finishing 39/50 wasn’t too bad in the end all things considered. Sometimes lists just don’t work for you, and that is fine. You simply have to try to give the best game you can, and play in the right spirit.

Massive shout out to Ian Simpkins, proprietor of Ibuy for pulling in a great crowd, running a superb event and putting in a seriously long shift in very warm conditions. You smashed it mate, again. Thank you so much for the work you put into this.

Fortunately on Sunday there was a little palette cleansing event at Firestorm Cards in Basingstoke. We know it’s only going to be a small crowd and everyone has basically agreed to bring, shall we say, less powerful stuff. Which still meant Dash Poe, a couple of Krennics, Whisper, a couple of Kylo Silencers…

For my part I thought I’d try the combination of my 3 favourite ships that hasn’t been paired before now. Boba Fenn and Boba Guri have been well documented but for this one I thought “to hell with it” and took Guri Fenn, or the more questionable name “Gurau”.

Obviously I had a lot of points to play with taking only two small base ships, but they were both pretty much as maxed out as they could be.

Fenn Rau	Guri
Push the Limit	Intensity
Advanced Protons Torpedoes	Advanced Protons Torpedoes
Concord Dawn Protector	Virago
Autothrusters	Star Viper MkII
	Autothrusters
	Scavenge Crane
82 Points	Fire Control System

After the frustration of the X-Wings the day before, putting ships I know I love flying on the table, when I know there are no bombs in anyone’s list, was more than gratifying!

Game 1 Against Dom Flannigan started brilliantly. Dom was flying Norra, the tubes brothers and captain Rex. Fenn dove into an opening and his APTs slammed into the ARC-170. Like I said it started brilliantly, then I forgot I’d stressed Fenn the turn before and rather than dodging every firing arc on the table he landed in range one of the U-Wing and the T65, oops. Dom had set up to take Guri on the following turn, which he duly did, but I gave him Fenn which cost me the game. However I did get half the U and Norra so it wasn’t an utter disaster. 49-100 loss. Had I not done that I suspect I would have lost Guri, but both Dom and I knew that Fenn would have cleared up after that.

So, sometimes you know when you’re spending a focus…

Game 2, Oliver Baldry flying Dash Poe, with Mangler on Dash rather than the Heavy Laser Cannon. Oliver came in quite fast with Dash, wanting to land the crits where he could, however it allowed both Fenn and Guri range one shots, Fenn with APTs. After blanking out twice Dash was gone in one turn of shooting. As good as intensity Poe is he can’t handle two ships coming for him constantly and when the crit landed stressing Poe and taking away the Talon Roll option that Oliver had been planning the next turn Ollie extented his hand and conceeded. 100-0 win to the scum!

My third game was against Dan Flewitt, running Kylo, Blackout and Epislon Ace. That’s a lot of ships scaring Guri! Well they would is she got scared. Guri did all the leg work on Epsilon Ace and Blackout, then Fenn zoomed in and the APTs hammered Kylo. Not wanting Guri to take all the credit. Another 100-0 win.

With only 6 of us playing and Tome getting very confused we had to manually pair off the fourth round. On a coin toss I got Ian Kafka running as PS1 Reaper, a PS2 doom shuttle (vader on a Tie Bomber), Countdown, Wampa and Dark Curse. 5 ships against 2 was quite an intimidating line up.

Fenn fell foul of Wampa’s ability at range 3, then a good block on Fenn a couple of turns later meant that Fenn got wrecked. I had lost Fenn Rau, Ian had lost Wampa… That’s not a favourable trade.

Guri was left with four ships to chew through on her own. The Doom shuttle went first in a blistering salvo of APTs. Then she had to go for the Reaper because with Jam consistently shutting down her dice mods she was on very thin ice. It took one set of APTs and a 4 dice primary trusting to the dice to deliver, but the Reaper dropped and Guri got her torps back for a third time, then the crane ran out. Next up Dark Curse had to die because of his pilot skill advantage. It took as many turns to drop a 3 health Tie Fighter as it did to drop the reaper because of the inability to modify dice. Countdown did his best, but with Guri moving after him it was only a couple of turns before the Striker dropped. 100-40 win, and Guri flew away from the debris strewn scenery feeling like a bit of a boss. Over the Four games I lost 3 ships and took out 12. That’s a pretty good exchange rate!

Seeing as how Guri is off to Croatia for the European Team Championships in a couple of weeks, and that Game of Thrones is filmed in Croatia, Guri gets to be the Mother of Firesprays.

The Sunday tournament was exactly the tonic I needed after the list frustration of Saturday. Relaxed, no one taking it too seriously and a good bunch of people all playing for the love of the game. Winning the whole event helped, but the fun I had flying those two ships was by far and away the big win. Stupid mistake against Dom in game one aside I was really happy with how I flew. Not long left now but I might have to try this list out again! (to be fair it might be even more fun come the 13th of September)

Next Time: ETC BUILD UP BEGINS

If you’re looking for X-Wing events head to the 186th Tournament Calendar.

if you play Shadespire I have a blog about that too, it is full of Orruks.